As of Tuesday, Tennessee basketball secured the fifth seed in the NCAA Tournament, according to ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi, following another back-and-forth week on the court.
As of Tuesday, Tennessee basketball secured the fifth seed in the NCAA Tournament, according to ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi, following another back-and-forth week on the court.
Earlier in the week, the Vols fell out of the AP Top 25 poll after losing another heartbreaker to the Kentucky Wildcats. This was the second time this season that Tennessee allowed Kentucky to make a successful second-half comeback after a double-digit deficit.
The Vols' last two losses of the season have come at the hands of Kentucky head coach Mark Pope’s Wildcats. Before the loss, Tennessee head coach Rick Barnes had the Vols looking stronger, having coasted on a four-game win streak, before the reality check hit them.
Yet Barnes seems to feel confident his team can get over the tough loss.
"They'll respond the same way. This was — I can take this (loss),” Barnes said. "The one in Knoxville, shoot, I wanted to — it took me two days to get over it, and I've been doing this a long time. I can normally let them go pretty quickly, but that was the way we just gift-wrapped that one. But they did what they had to do.”
One of the bigger stories from the loss has been the continued rise of freshman Nate Ament, who led the Vols in scoring the last three games, including the Kentucky loss.
Against Kentucky, Ament dropped a tie in his season high for total points with 29. He shot 10 of 17 from the field while showcasing growth from beyond the 3-point line, shooting 4 of 6.
While Ament has found some recent success from 3, the team has struggled to find its offensive identity. In the Kentucky loss, the Vols shot just 38% from beyond the arc.
"Well, if we can put the first two halves of both of these games together, we'd probably win the national championship,” Barnes said. “But we haven't, and in the first half, that happens. If it had been the other way, I wouldn't have been really concerned about it.”
As Barnes has also noticed, the potential this team holds isn’t something that can be taken lightly. They still have wins against top teams like Houston and Louisville, but they have also lost enough games to drop them clear out of the poll.
The inconsistency between halves tells a much larger story that has become an apparent issue for the Vols. As Barnes mentioned, the potential for this team has been more than noticeable, yet even then, they can’t put together two halves of complete basketball.
"It's the kind of game we expected,” Barnes said. “Our guys are really disappointed. We think that we are as good as anybody that we play on any given night. But we can't make the mistakes we made. Yet we need some of those baskets at the rim to take the pressure off the perimeter guys. We've got to get some of them."
The Vols have eight more regular-season contests before postseason play begins. While Ament has continued his rise, guard Ja’Kobi Gillespie leads the team with an average of 18.5 points per game.
Tennessee's next game will be a trip to Starkville, Miss., for a meeting against the Bulldogs.